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Sunday, 2 June 2013

How do you slay a Hydra?

One
head at a time (and make sure you burn the stump...)

In the
ancient Greek myths, Heracles (Hercules if you’re Roman) was a great hero, the son of Zeus, and famed for completing twelve mighty tasks while indentured to the service of
King Eurystheus.

Many of Heracles’ trials involved the slaying or capturing of
various terrible beasts that were ravaging the land - the Nemean lion,
Erymanthian boar, the Styphalian birds and the mares of Diomedes. However, it Heracles’
Second Labour, the slaying of the Lernaean Hydra, that got me to thinking…

In the
myth, Heracles is sent to Lake Lerna kill the Hydra, a monstrous, vicious and
many-headed serpent with poisonous breath and blood, each head filled with
teeth and jaws trying to tear you apart. Killing the Hydra was especially
problematic, because if you decapitated one head, two more would grow back in
its place. Meanwhile, just to complicate matters, the goddess Hera also sends a
giant crab to distract Heracles (as if he didn’t have enough on his hands
dealing with a multi-headed, poisonous super-reptile…).

Heracles eventually
overcomes the Hydra by covering his nose and mouth with a cloth to avoid the
poisonous fumes, before using a fire-brand to cauterise the Hydra's neck stumps after
severing each head, while crushing the crab underfoot for good measure. (Easy…)

And
slaying the Lernaean Hydra is just like Data Governance, isn’t it?

You have to
prepare yourself for the task and be ready for any poison, before engaging in
the fight on multiple fronts. And unless you’re well prepared with the right
tools and methods, dealing with the immediate issue only serves to creates more
problems further down the line.

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About Me

Alan D. Duncan is Research Director for Business Analytics at Gartner Inc and an evangelist for information and analytics as enablers of better business outcomes.
Formerly a member of the advisory board to QFire Software and Director of Data Governance at UNSW Australia (The University of New South Wales), he was named by Information-Management.com in their 2012 list of “Top 12 Data Governance gurus you should be following on Twitter”.
As husband to his ever-forgiving wife (Kylie) and father to two increasingly bemused kids (Ollie and Isla), Alan is reminded every day to aspire to adequacy. To date, he hasn’t achieved it.